What is Wrong with Mamaroneck High?

[jjinla]

It's superior in more ways than that, but the schools in Ossining are terrible, not OK - 4 or 5 on Greatschools at best. Schools in Yonkers and Mt. Vernon score that low.

I don't know if the teachers are bad or the kids are ESL and/or have no parental support, but to compare a majority minority town to one with maybe 15% max is apples and oranges.

The only similarity to our towns is that we are both on water and have more Hispanics than Scarsdale.

[KathyNY76]

Originally Posted by AliciaN

Like my two kids Seriously, I am becoming pretty alarmed at what I'm hearing on these boards! Educated people, avoiding an entirely nice area because they can't bear the thought of their precious child in a class where 3 of 20 kids might be of Mexican descent?

And my ivy-league grad husband!

I didn't mean to imply Hispanics weren't smart!! Sorry if it came off that way!

I was trying to get the point across that often the kids in the schools are children of immigrants and English is not a first language nor spoken at home. So that inevitably makes test taking harder. My husband came here when he was 6, and while he was fully bi-lingual by high school and highly intelligent, his SATs were nowhere close to mine. That's what I meant when I said he was a hispanic contributing to low test scores. Also why we don't care about the scores much in our evaluation of a school.

[KathyNY76]

Originally Posted by jjinla

It's superior in more ways than that, but the schools in Ossining are terrible, not OK - 4 or 5 on Greatschools at best. Schools in Yonkers and Mt. Vernon score that low.

I don't know if the teachers are bad or the kids are ESL and/or have no parental support, but to compare a majority minority town to one with maybe 15% max is apples and oranges.

The only similarity to our towns is that we are both on water and have more Hispanics than Scarsdale.

Are you only basing your opinion on the greatschools score? Because that's just ridiculous. Do you know anyone with kids in the district? My husband and I are educated upper middle class parents who chose this district. And I know many people of our same education and economic level who have done the same. The schools have very involved parents - of all races! The teachers are great and engaged.

It's not apples and oranges at all. Mamaroneck has lower test scores than Chappaqua, Scarsdale, Bronxville, etc. What do you think that is due to? A handful of bad teachers or uninvolved parents? No, it's due to an immigrant population who is handicapped with taking standardized tests in their second language. Something they have very much in common with Ossining. However, Ossining's immigrant population is larger than Mamaroneck's. Doesn't it then make sense that the large ESL population here would pull our scores down further than there? I bet if the hispanic populations were equal in our two towns, our test scores would be similar, too.

[bg7]

I think the graduation rate drags down Ossining's "great schools" score. Especially the Latino graduation rate - less than half.Hispanic kids are graduating at a much higher rate from Mamaroneck HS (at least according to the publicly available stats).

Having said that, students with low scores dropping out before taking SATs etc should actually serve to increase the apparent average SAT score achieved by the school.

[jjinla]

It's apples to oranges because any time a school becomes majority minority, like it or not, the atmosphere in the class changes.

If you think that your kid will be getting the same quality of instruction with 2 ESL kids (our class) vs. 10 or more, you need to talk to some teacher friends fast. Graduation rate, parent support, all of that changes...along with discipline issues usually, too.

Also, our district has a much lower class size for our heavy immigrant elementary and k is full day there. We recognize their shortcomings and throw more resources at them to bring them up to speed by middle and hs, hence our lower dropout rate. Can Ossining say the same?

[KathyNY76]

Originally Posted by jjinla

It's apples to oranges because any time a school becomes majority minority, like it or not, the atmosphere in the class changes.

If you think that your kid will be getting the same quality of instruction with 2 ESL kids (our class) vs. 10 or more, you need to talk to some teacher friends fast. Graduation rate, parent support, all of that changes...along with discipline issues usually, too.

Also, our district has a much lower class size for our heavy immigrant elementary and k is full day there. We recognize their shortcomings and throw more resources at them to bring them up to speed by middle and hs, hence our lower dropout rate. Can Ossining say the same?

Because we have more hispanic kids the 'atmosphere' changes? The discipline issues are worse? B/C, what, brown people are inherently bad?

Ossining actually has universal pre-K for all students. And our KG is full day and has been for years - for ALL students, not just the ones 'lucky' enough to be in class with those pesky hispanics.

A lower dropout rate among our hispanics is concerning to me, as a person who is concerned with all children getting a good education. But to me as a parent choosing a school for my kids, I know mine are not at the same risk for dropout, so it doesn't worry me for their education. The great options the school system offers far outweigh those things for me.

As I said, we are very much of the opinion that numbers don't tell the whole story. First hand knowledge of a school is most important to us and we heard and saw enough to know our kids will get a great education here. But when people say our schools are "horrible" without any knowledge of them aside from some website's random ranking (I see you don't put stock in the US News rankings, but greatschools is the expert apparently on all things schools?), I feel the need to give my first hand knowledge. You don't need to come here, but I want others who might be looking to know that people on this site often speak 'out of school' - pun intended....